Denver Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic said that teams with longer benches and rotations were the ones winning after the Thunder eliminated the team in the second round of the playoffs. It took no time for the front office's new duo to transform the roster into one that can be one of the last teams standing.
What the Nuggets have accomplished since the official start of free agency is astounding. They traded Michael Porter Jr. and a 2032 first-round pick to the Nets for Cam Johnson, signed Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr. to a one-year, veteran's minimum deal, and traded Dario Saric to the Kings for Jonas Valanciunas.
What Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer did within 24 hours is what Calvin Booth failed to do for the past couple of years. Denver went from "wasting" Jokic to putting the Nuggets in a superb position to win their second title in three years. The Western Conference is already stacked, and it has only gotten even stronger over the past few days with the flurry of the Nuggets' moves.
Nuggets finally did what Nikola Jokic was waiting for
Denver was unstoppable in the 2023 playoffs, but that summer, the team lost a couple of contributors from its championship squad. Brown signed a two-year, $45 million contract with the Pacers, and Jeff Green signed a one-year deal with the Rockets. Two key bench players were gone.
The following summer, the Nuggets lost starter Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, as he signed a three-year, $66 million contract with the Magic (a move that didn't age well for Orlando). The bad free agency news continued, as Denver signed Dario Saric to a two-year deal that included a player option. A few weeks later, rookie DaRon Holmes II tore his Achilles in Summer League.
As long as Jokic is on the roster, the Nuggets will have a chance to contend for a title. However, as the playoffs showed, Denver needs more than Jokic to bring another trophy home. It needs a strong bench (look at how stacked the Thunder are), and now, it finally has one again.
Jokic is the king of having a good work-life balance. When he's in Serbia, nothing else matters, but you can bet that even he cracked a smile at the moves that the Nuggets made over the past few days. He'll reunite with Brown, throw open looks to Johnson and Hardaway on the perimeter, and sit on the bench knowing that minutes without him on the floor shouldn't be a disaster with Valanciunas.